Internet addiction is a problem. It exists on a spectrum, and many of us find ourselves exhibiting some symptoms on that spectrum today even though we don’t have a true addiction. And, of course, there are the extreme cases of Internet addiction at the other end of the spectrum: the people whose lives are ruined because of their Internet activities. People at different parts of the spectrum may find that different treatments are most effective. Luckily, there are a variety of treatment options available to help deal with Internet addiction.
Because Internet addiction is new in our society, these treatment options are relatively new. In some cases, they’re old methods (like talk therapy) adapted to the new condition. Either way, they’re controversial. Some people swear by one and don’t believe in the others. Others don’t believe that Internet addiction is a problem requiring treatment at all. Despite the controversy, what’s true is that there are some people out there struggling with what they perceive to be an Internet addiction, and there are different treatment options that may or may not help those individuals.
In the world of addiction, there are two primary treatment paths. The first is total abstinence. This is often used in treating drug addiction, where the goal is to stop using the drug immediately, entirely, and forever. The second path is harm reduction. This is common in treating food addiction, where the goal would obviously not be to never eat food again but instead to develop a healthy relationship with eating, reducing harm caused by food consumption.
Since we live in a constantly connected world, it doesn’t make sense to aim for Internet abstinence. After all, what would happen if you went to your school or job and told them that you could no longer use computers? Therefore, the Internet addiction treatment goal instead is harm reduction. The idea is to learn to use Internet devices in intentional, limited ways for the person’s benefit without falling back into addictive behavior. In some cases, this may mean abstinence from specific Internet activities, such as online pornography or video games.
It may also mean abstinence or “detox” for a period of time. Sometimes a person with an Internet addiction does have to quit all forms of Internet activity until they have successfully cut ties with their addiction. Only then can they start to use the Internet again in limited ways that are less destructive. Although there may be some treatment providers out there that recommend complete and permanent Internet abstinence for addicts, that approach is extreme and not well suited to today’s connected society, so all of the options in this book are harm reduction treatments.
Where should you go if you want to get help for an Internet addiction? There are a wide variety of options. In fact, the options are increasing rapidly as more and more people recognize the problem of addiction as well as the general value of disconnecting at times from the Internet. As with any addiction, there is no one-size-fits-all treatment plan. The approach needs to be individualized to the client’s specific needs.
A person might need to try several different treatment options before they find the one that is the perfect match. Some people find that even if a specific type of treatment doesn’t “work” (meaning it doesn’t entirely break the addiction), it can lend value, increasing insight in ways that lead to reduction in the behaviors. The takeaway is that people with Internet addiction may need to try several different approaches, but there is no harm in ones that appear at first to “fail” because they add to the personal growth process and aid in harm reduction over time.
One of the most popular, and most intense, Internet addiction treatment options is inpatient rehab. These centers restrict or entirely cut off Internet connection. This gives the person a chance to completely disconnect in a safe setting. Many people will go through withdrawal symptoms, developing intense cravings for Internet use as they try to break their addiction. A rehab center provides the structure and support that some people need to get through this challenging part of recovery.
Rehab centers for Internet addiction are modeled on rehab centers for other types of addiction. Many rehab centers provide counseling to help people move forward with their lives in healthy ways. Internet addiction may be masking other emotional and psychological issues. Counselors on-site are able to help people work through those underlying issues in order to reduce the likelihood of relapse. Furthermore, they can help clients learn coping skills that will improve their likelihood of success.
People who go to rehab centers for Internet addiction typically “step down” when they leave. In other words, they do not just leave the center and hope for the best. Instead, they transition to outpatient services, including the help of support groups and individual therapy to aid in the recovery process. The rehab center jump-starts the process, and then the follow-up helps support it over time. This is similar to the way that people leaving drug rehab may go to a sober living house and/or to twelve-step groups to help keep their sobriety. Rehab provides the place to detox from the drug, even when the drug is the Internet.
There are Internet addiction rehab centers all over the world. They are particularly common in Asia, especially in China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. They are also easy to find in Holland and some other areas in Europe. It took the United States a little while to catch up, but these centers are now increasingly available in the United States as well. Some inpatient rehab centers are for all different (or many different) types of addiction including Internet addiction, whereas others are specific to Internet addiction alone. A few of the most well-known Internet addiction treatment centers in the United States include the following:
Rehab centers are a terrific option for many people. However, they have their drawbacks, the biggest of which is cost. Health insurance may not cover treatment for Internet addiction. Therefore, clients may need to pay out of pocket, and the costs of inpatient care are exorbitant for some families. Plus, of course, the client has to take time off of work or school to attend inpatient care, so it’s not always an ideal choice. It’s usually reserved for the most severe cases of Internet addiction.
Wilderness camps are another popular option that offer some of the same benefits as rehab centers. These are therapeutic programs that last several days or even several weeks. Participants may live outdoors the entire time (hiking long distances, for example). Alternatively, they may reside in cabins, spending a majority of their days outdoors but off-line.
In either case, wilderness camps offer a disconnection—or detox—from the Internet. Furthermore, they teach survival skills, help people to reconnect with nature, and encourage face-to-face connection with the others in the group. Typically, these camps offer individual and group therapy to help individuals resolve their underlying addiction issues.
There are many good arguments to be made that nature is vital in helping humans heal, particularly those humans who have been out of touch with nature (and themselves) due to Internet addiction. There’s a theory called the biophilia hypothesis, which posits that humans have an innate need to seek out nature and other creatures. We need this. And yet, increasingly, we are more and more disconnected from nature. And the more disconnected we become from nature, the more disconnected we become from our inner selves and our fellow humans.
In fact, lack of interaction with nature might cause humans to become both physically and mentally ill, thereby exacerbating the negative effects of Internet addiction. Johann Hari reports on research from the 1970s conducted at the State Prison of Southern Michigan, which found that simply being able to see nature from a cell made prisoners less likely to become ill. Wilderness camps and eco-therapy help to resolve Internet addiction by offering the benefits of nature while also eliminating access to technology.
One example of this form of treatment is the Pacific Quest treatment center, which uses a treatment model that focuses equally on nature, the mind-body connection, and the individual’s place within their community. Among other things, they use horticulture therapy to offer sensory integration and somatic experiences that serve as intervention for Internet addiction. They offer services to adolescents and young adults. Outback Therapeutic Expeditions in Utah and blueFire in Idaho are two more examples of teen wilderness therapy programs for Internet addiction.
Of course, not everyone can take the time to enter inpatient treatment in the form of a rehab center or even a wilderness camp. Individual outpatient therapy is another very common treatment option. This is the type of therapy in which you visit a therapist, usually for one hour weekly, to work through your issues. There are many different types of therapists, so it’s important to look for one who understands addiction generally and Internet addiction specifically.
Each therapist will approach treatment in their own way. However, this type of therapy commonly incorporates behavior modification, grounding, and mindfulness techniques. Grounding techniques help people to come into the present moment by focusing on their senses. This is particularly important for people with extreme addiction who find themselves dealing with symptoms like psychosis and depersonalization. However, it can be useful for anyone entering therapy to bring them into the room and help them focus on the task at hand.
Likewise, mindfulness practice helps bring people into the present moment. These techniques can be used outside of the therapy room to help work through cravings and sit with uncomfortable feelings instead of turning to the Internet for distraction and numbing. Oftentimes the skills that you learn in the therapy room are what you take with you to actually resolve the issue. Practicing skills of self-control and emotional regulation in therapy will help you deal better with addiction triggers at home.
Behavior modification provides concrete solutions to problems of Internet addiction. For example, a person who always turns on streaming Internet television as soon as they come home from work can learn to instead turn on music. Likewise, someone who immediately picks up their phone when they wake up in the morning can learn to leave it aside and go for a brisk walk before starting their day. Therefore, it’s common for Internet addiction therapy to include some form of behavioral therapy such as cognitive behavioral therapy. Therapists may also use other popular interventions and treatment approaches, such as motivational interviewing, which helps the person with addiction gain insight into their problem so that they can work toward change.
In some cases, psychotherapeutic treatment is combined with medication. For example, Kevin Roberts found that many patients see success when they combine naltrexone (a drug that acts on the brain’s reward system and is a common treatment for alcoholism) with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for depression treatment. It not only treats the depression but also helps treat the addiction. As we learn more and more about the way that Internet use and addiction affect brain chemistry, we’ll likely see more and more medication options for treatment.
Similar to individual therapy, people sometimes also choose couples’ counseling or family therapy to help with Internet addiction. Families are systems, and when one part of the system isn’t functioning well, it affects the entire system.
Family therapy can help address underlying issues that may be contributing to the addiction. People develop addictions for all different types of reasons. If the family has a history of trauma, then working through the trauma can help alleviate the need to escape that might motivate addictive behavior. If the family has a history of addiction, they can look at that through therapy to help resolve those complex issues and better understand how Internet addiction has become a part of their coping mechanism.
Family therapy for Internet addiction can also help each family member work through pain and problems resulting from the behavior. For example, if parents and teens are fighting over Internet use, then family therapy can help them develop new communication skills and strategies for negotiating Internet time. Parents with concerns about a child’s excessive Internet use can learn new ways of talking to their child about the addiction.
Group therapy is yet another option for people with an Internet addiction. It is often used in combination with individual therapy. For example, a person might see an individual therapist once a week and also attend group therapy once a week. Alternatively, they might see an individual therapist every other week and then have group therapy on the alternate weeks. Of course, sometimes people attend only group therapy and do not choose an individual therapy component at all. Or they may attend individual therapy for a period of time and then switch and attend group therapy (or vice versa). Different approaches work for different people.
Group therapy offers some of the same benefits as both inpatient rehab and outpatient individual therapy. The primary benefit is experiencing the support of other people who are going through the same struggles. Sometimes addiction makes people feel very alone, as though they are the only ones in the world with the problem. When the person with addiction witnesses others going through the same situations, it decreases that sense of isolation and hopelessness. This can be especially important with Internet addiction, since Internet use is a mostly solo activity, despite the illusion of being connected to others. Isolation and loneliness are already a big part of the problem, so reflection back from a group can be an especially powerful part of treatment.
Ironically there are also online support groups for people struggling with Internet addiction. Typically, these are most helpful for people who struggle with a very specific online behavior. In other words, these groups won’t help people who are addicted to use in general since the online group is another form of Internet use. However, they can be helpful for people with specific addictions, such as gaming addiction. For example, a woman who lost her son to suicide related to an addiction to the game EverQuest launched the support group On-Line Gamers Anonymous (OLGA), which offers daily meetings to support people addicted to gaming as well as to help their loved ones. Kevin Roberts goes far as to argue that “there is something uniquely healing about using the computer and the Internet for recovery as opposed to using them as vehicles for indulging an addiction.”
People who are unable or unwilling to access therapy in their communities may find that online therapy or an online support group is a next best option. We’ll discuss this further in Chapter 9.
Internet addiction exists on a spectrum. Some people don’t necessarily feel like they need outside help from therapy. However, they do feel like they need to make a shift in their own lives. They want to reduce their Internet usage because they feel like doing so will improve their quality of life. There are many different self-help approaches for people who want to try reducing Internet usage on their own. Note that people in full-blown addiction may not find these solutions helpful enough because they lack external support. One solution for that is to join up with a buddy or find a mentor willing to support you in your efforts, a solution that can be helpful for people in any stage of Internet addiction.
The digital diet is one of the most popular forms of self-help treatment for Internet addiction. It takes different forms. In fact, there seem to be as many different digital diets as there are different food diets. Some people do technology fasts, others restrict their intake, and still others focus on choosing the “right” usage. In so many ways, the choices mimic popular food diets, including fasting, selecting specific amounts and types of consumption, and focusing on nutrition or wellness rather than just quitting the habit.
Since there are so many different approaches to digital dieting, we won’t discuss them all in detail. Generally speaking, a digital diet means that you restrict your intake of Internet media for a period of time, which might be short or could be long. Note that a diet is not typically a lifestyle change. The digital diet is for people who just want a break from their addictive behavior but don’t necessarily have any intention of quitting for good.
Here are just a few of the popular approaches to digital dieting:
Regardless of the approach, the general idea of a digital diet is to reduce (or eliminate) screen usage, replacing that time with low-tech or analog activities, particularly those that include face-to-face interaction with loved ones and time in nature. Some of the specific features of a digital diet may include the following:
Of course, we all know that food diets only work temporarily. You eventually give up the diet and go back to your old eating habits. People often find themselves regaining the weight that they lost. Certainly, the same thing can happen with the digital diet. But here’s the difference: the digital diet gives your brain a chance to relax and daydream and start working in new ways again. It helps stimulate the neural pathways that you weren’t activating when you were constantly online. So, a digital diet may be useful even if you do end up going back to your old ways. And it may also help prevent you from going back to those old ways completely because of the potential to change your brain.
You can also use the diet or food analogy to frame your Internet use in a broader way. Most people agree (even if they don’t follow it themselves) that a healthy food diet is one that consists primarily of certain healthy foods while allowing minimal exceptions for junk food. Likewise, a healthy Internet life might consist of engaging mostly in certain activities with limited exceptions for those that pose a higher risk of addiction. In neither case, food or Internet, should you overindulge too often because doing so causes health risks.
Rebooting is another self-help approach, ironically named after the computer itself (powering down for a time). The idea is that you disconnect for a period of time using that time to reconnect with yourself, others, and nature. Then you slowly reintegrate the activities that you want in your online life. This can be similar to a digital diet, particularly the Elimination Diet, but it involves a little bit more of a lifestyle change.
A diet is something that you do, but rebooting is really more about the relationship that you have with yourself as well as with your technology. If you were to reboot, or rekindle, romance with your partner, then it could lead to long-lasting change. That’s one of the benefits of the reboot mind-set.
Daniel Sieberg suggests a four-step process for rebooting your relationship with technology:
Similarly, Cal Newport offers a two-pronged approach to a digital declutter:
Of course, not everyone can completely disconnect from the Internet. Your job may require some online time. However, during that rethinking period, you can become aware of the minimum amount of Internet activity really required as compared to the amount that you do (which is probably far higher). Your reboot might mean disconnecting from all Internet activities except for those that are work related, and you might limit work activities to specific days and times.
Yet another self-help approach is to learn about and incorporate contemplative computing practices. This is a mindfulness approach to technology. Instead of a diet or reboot, it is about learning an entirely new way of life. Of course, it could start with a diet or reboot, and in fact, it almost always starts with some kind of digital elimination. However, the goal is to entirely shift your relationship with technology so that you are using it in the most useful, intentional way possible. This can be the best long-term solution for many people, since we do live in a world that seems to require us to use the Internet on a regular basis.
The term itself—“contemplative computing”—was coined by technology forecaster and author Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, who writes about it extensively in the book The Distraction Addiction. He explains that the concept incorporates some of the world’s oldest philosophical and religious techniques for managing your “monkey mind” and focusing your attention. However, this is combined with the reality of the twenty-first century and the new scientific information that we have about how humans interact with computers. Our attention and creativity are shaped and influenced by the technology we use; working with that understanding is an important part of contemplative computing.
Pang says that there are four key principles to contemplative computing, each of which is designed to help you redefine your relationship with technology. The first principle is that we can have deep relationships with our technology, to the point where it can actually serve us as an extension of our minds. For example, we no longer need to devote brain space to memorizing people’s phone numbers, since our technology does that for us. This isn’t a bad thing; it’s just a thing, and it can be a good thing if we use it mindfully. The second principle is awareness that the world is increasingly distracting but that there are solutions to that distraction. The third and fourth principles relate to this: we must be contemplative, and in doing so we have the power to redesign the extended mind. In other words, through intentional interaction with our computers, we have the ability to make technology work for us instead of against us.
Contemplative computing starts with something as simple, and ancient, as breathing. And although that may sound ridiculous at first, it’s actually surprisingly important. Did you know that there’s such a thing as “email apnea”? In sleep apnea, people develop a wide variety of health issues because of the fact that they aren’t properly breathing while they sleep. In “email apnea” it’s been found that people have a tendency to hold their breath, or breathe more shallowly, as they open email. It has to do with the anticipation of what you’re going to find inside the message, and it likely happens as we do all different sorts of online activities. Start paying attention to how much, and how deeply, you do or don’t breathe as you engage with your devices.
Of course, “contemplative computing” is just one term (and approach) for a lifestyle technology change. Another example is digital minimalism, which is what Cal Newport had in mind with the digital declutter process described previously. He emphasizes that digital minimalism is “a philosophy of technology.” It’s not just a series of tips and hacks (although there are approaches that help) but is a way of living. People who embrace minimalism believe that less is more, and you can apply this to your digital life. The goal isn’t to eliminate technology but rather to engage with it in the most mindful way possible so that it’s always supporting your deepest values and never detracting from the rest of your life. You mindfully choose the Internet activities you want in your life and you optimize them as much as possible. The thirty-day digital declutter can help you break the addiction, but it’s the mindful approach to resuming your activity that can help keep you digitally sober in the long term.
Notably, parents can engage in contemplative computing practices, or intentional Internet usage, when designing rules for their children’s use. Parents raising children today are raising them with devices, often lots of them starting at a very young age. We know that young brains are at some risk of addiction, but we also don’t know the extent of that, and we face the reality that the devices are going to be a part of their daily lives. Therefore, we don’t have clear answers about what type of content and for how long each day is good for kids, bad for kids, or neutral. Parents have to make those determinations for themselves. Engaging in mindful practices and paying attention to the effects the experiences have on children, thus implementing some contemplative computer or digital minimalism into their lives, can be one approach. Anya Kamenetz’s book The Art of Screen Time is one resource for parents interested in learning more about the pros and cons of screens for kids and how to engage mindfully with devices in your own home.